“What did that woman want with you, Claude?” said Mrs. Buchanan, coming in with panting breath, and depositing herself in the chair from which Mrs. Mowbray had risen but a little while before.
The minister sat with his head in his hands, his face covered, his aspect that of a man utterly broken down. He did not answer for some time, and then:
“I think she wants my life-blood,” he said.
“Your life-blood! Claude, my man, are you taking leave of your senses—or what is it you mean?”
Once more there was a long pause. His wife was not perhaps so frightened as she might have been in other circumstances. She was very tired. The satisfaction of having got rid of all her guests was strong in her mind. She had only just recovered her breath, after toiling upstairs. Lastly, it was so absurd that any one should want the minister’s life-blood; last of all, the smiling and flattering Mrs. Mowbray, that she was more inclined to laugh than to be alarmed.
“You may laugh,” said Mr. Buchanan, looking up at her from below the shadow of his clasped hands, with hollow eyes, “but it is death to me. She wants me to give her a list of all old Anderson’s debtors, Mary. I told her I only knew one.”
“Goodness, Claude! did you say it was yourself?”
“Not yet,” he said, with a deep sigh.
“Not yet! do you mean that after the great deliverance we got, and the blessed kindness of that old man, you are going to put your head under the yoke again? What has she to do with it? He thought nothing of her. He let the boy get it because there was nobody else, but he never took any interest even in the boy. He never would have permitted—Claude! those scruples of yours, they are ridiculous; they are quite ridiculous. What, oh! what do you mean? To ruin your own for the sake of that little puppy of a boy? God forgive me; it is probably not the laddie’s fault. He is just the creation of his silly mother. And they are well off already. If old Anderson had left them nothing at all, they were well off already. Claude, if she has come here to play upon your weakness, to get back what the real owner had made you a present of——”
“Mary, I have never been able to get it out of my mind that it was the smaller debtors he wanted to release, but not me.”